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Regular PC maintenance is just as important as cleaning out your garage or going to gym. No one wants to put the effort into properly maintaining his or her garage or his or her computer. Even though it is an oxymoron, you have to think of your computer like an electronic organism. It needs food and needs to be properly cleaned in order to run as you would like it to. just The nice thing about most regular PC maintenance is that you can auto-run most tasks so you don’t have to remember to handle them.Keeping a Copy
The most important thing for you to do in the course of regular PC maintenance is to back up your files. This should be done on a daily basis. Imagine if your computer crashed, and you lost all your files. Without a back up, you have little to no chance of retrieving them.With Windows XP, it is easy to back up most of your vital files during regular PC maintenance. Pretty much everything is located inside of ‘C:/Documents and Settings’ folder. That means that all you have to do is zip that folder and burn it onto a disc for safekeeping. Of course, you can buy a program that will do this for you, thus eliminating your need for this particular task in regular PC maintenance.Scanning Procedures
Next, you should do habitual scans and updates as part of your regular PC maintenance. Doing this once a week is the best. If you don’t already have an anti-virus program, go out and get one before you start regular PC maintenance. Without one, you are vulnerable to system crashing viruses. So go get one before you experience that hassle!Naturally, your anti-virus program is useless if you don’t update it. Usually you can set it to scan and update automatically without any effort from you whatsoever. Of course, you should also update your Windows software fairly often as part of your regular PC maintenance. This will help to keep your Windows operating system running smoothly. It also fixes any previous bugs and glitches that are inherent in most programs. Regular Windows updates also helps to fill any holes that your firewall and anti-virus software may have.Internal Cleaning
Once a month, as part of your regular PC maintenance, you should do a run disk clean up and disk defragmenter. Doing so will help keep your PC running smoothly and quickly. Best of all, it’s not very difficult. All you have to do is click on a couple of things and leave your machine to work while you sleep or do some errands. Who knew regular PC maintenance could be so easy?To do either of these, you must first stop any programs running in the background. Things like instant messengers or download managers will prohibit the scanners from doing what they need to do. Once those are closed, the next step to this piece of regular PC maintenance is to go into ‘My Computer’ and right click on your C:/ drive. Then go to ‘Properties’ and in the new window, click on the ‘Tools’ tab. There are the two programs you need to use: Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragment. It is advisable to run Disk Cleanup first. This will determine if there are any bad sectors on your hard disk. Don’t be surprised if there are. Over time, your hardware can age and things like this happen. When the scan disk is finished, do a disk defragment. A disk defragment will consolidate all your fragmented files and keep your PC running fast, which may speed up the regular PC maintenance process.Registry Cleaning
Another thing you should as part of your regular PC maintenance is to scan and back up, fairly recurrently, your Windows registry. The registry is a database of files that log certain preferences within programs and from multiple users. You want to keep your registry happy and healthy through regular PC maintenance. You can buy software that scans and automatically makes a back up copy for you so that you will be covered should you ever encounter a crash. Do some research so you can find one that suits you. If you are better with computers, then you can probably do it by yourself. Be careful, though, because you can really screw it up during your regular PC maintenance.Hopefully now you can see just how regular PC maintenance can solve many problems. It isn’t that difficult for the most part. It is time consuming, but it is also incredibly important. Try and get yourself in a regular PC maintenance routine to help make it easier for you.

If you run a pc operating system, you will need to know how to fix a computer crash. And trust me, not that I have anything against pc’s, because it what I use, but over 95% of the world uses it. And inevitably, you will crash your computer. So, we need to know how to fix it.You should be fully aware that your computer will crash. This means when you are working on it, you should always ensure you are saving your work as you go. If you don’t really plan on saving the work, just temporarily, then it really does not matter what you call the file. Just don’t forget the name. This ensures you will still have your work if your computer crashes.

More kids go online daily then ever before. Kids are surfing for homework help, chatting with friends, playing games or they are just doing what kids do, being curious.

Keeping your children safe online can be much easier then keeping them safe outside. All it takes is some good Internet Parenting. By this, I mean a parent that is aware of what their kids are doing online and a parent that has the computer out of the bedroom and in an open area. A good Internet Parent will check up on who their kids are chatting with and review any Internet sites their child may be part of such as MySpace, Teenspot, Bebo, or any other social networking site.

Your kids Online safety depends on you, the parent. You can set rules, install monitoring software, limit your child’s time online but if you are not actively involved with their Internet usage you will never know if they are putting themselves in danger. Here are 5 simple rules that can make a world of difference in keeping your child safe online.

1. Put the computer in an open area like the kitchen or living room.

2. Install monitoring, blocking software.

3. Get involved with your child’s Internet usage and let them know you are involved by reviewing their activity.

4. Talk to your child about the dangers of the Internet.

5. Teach them how to search safely.

Parents, get involved with your kids online usage, their safety depends on it.

The sad fact is that the internet is not a safe place for kids. Though the internet can be a fun and exciting place for your kids to spend their free time, there are many dangers. Internet Explorer Parental Controls are only in Internet Explorer Version 7. If you did not see the options below in your version you need to update your version of Internet Explorer at windowsupdate.com

To activate Internet Explorer Parental Controls:

1. Click the Tools icon on the top right.
2. From the drop down menu, click internet options.
3. Click the Content Tab.
4. Click “Enable Content Adviser”
5. There are sliders here that set boundaries for different types of sites including ones that have content such as sex, nudity, gambling, tobacco, etc.
6. You can also block selected sites.

However, a parent might think that their child is completely safe on the internet with Internet Explorer Parental Controls. This is incorrect. A computer savvy child (You’ll be surprised, Children are getting better at computers younger in this age) will simply download another browser and completely bypass Internet Explorer Parental Controls. In addition Internet Explorer Parental Controls are passive; whenever a site is visited it is checked against a list of blocked sites. A site may be new enough that it might not on be the list. Also a site might seem safe to the Internet Explorer Parental Controls (not have any questionable content on them), but actually link to sites with questionable content. Gamesage.com and gamesages.com were both similar sites but one was a site full of video game tips and another was an adult site. Internet Explorer Parental Controls might not be able to detect these minor discrepancies.

Internet Explorer 7’s new features:

RSS Reader - Stay up to date on the most important sites you visit with the new RSS Reader. Keep in touch with new forum post or breaking news right within Internet Explorer.

Anti-Phishing Filter - Have you been a victim of Identity Theft? Internet Explorer 7 now protects you from Phishing (Identity Theft) by blocking known sites to steal your identity. You can report sites as well to be blocked by the Anti-Phishing filter.

Improved Security - With Internet Explorer 7 ActiveX Controls are disabled by default that were not used in Internet Explorer 6. With this Internet Explorer 7’s security is very much improved.

Tab Browsing - Another welcomed feature that currently is in with Firefox web browser.

Improved Standards Support - Another lacking feature of Internet Explorer 6 is standards support. With the birth of Internet Explorer 7 you have now a much better browser with the very much needed standards support.

Windows Vista IE Security = Just WOW

With the release of Windows Vista due by the Christmas 2006 Shopping season the improved security with Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 both combined make a wonder product upgrade. Internet Explorer 7’s protected mode is built upon the user account protection features in Windows Vista. With this new security innovation Internet Explorer now runs with low system rights protecting stuff like things executing like Internet Explorer 6 has been known to do. This will cut the amount of unwanted spyware/adware/malware from even installing by itself simply by visiting a vulnerable website.

Overall Conclusion

Internet Explorer 7 is a much welcomed upgrade over any other previous version. Internet Explorer 7’s security will be as good or better then Mozilla Firefox. And the welcome of Tab Browsing will make users very organized as well. Internet Explorer 7 will for sure take some of the marketshare Firefox stole. Overall though Internet Explorer 7 is as well designed product from Microsoft.